Wasn't Holmes also a skilled boxer in addition to bartitsu? I've only read A Study In Scarlet and The Sign of the Four.

Ah so you've read pages 7 to 184 of "The Complete Sherlock Holmes, Volume I" from Barnes and Nobles Classics?

You see, I surmised that you would have been very unlikely to have picked up the very first two short stories on your own, without knowing much about Holmes literature.

So, naturally, you would have come across these stories in a recent compendium of short stories. Since you live in the NYC metro area I surmised that, if you became interested in reading Holmes stories after seeing the movie, you'd naturally walk to the nearest Barnes and Nobles and pick up the hardcover first volume of Barnes and Nobles Classics "The Complete Sherlock Holmes, Volume I".

From Chapter 2 of "A Study in Scarlet", Watson notes that Holmes knows:

- next to nothing about philosophy, astronomy, politics
- Little about geology and botany
- "Profound" knowledge of chemistry
- Plays the violin very well
- Is an expert fencer, boxer, and swordsman
- Good practical knowledge of British law.

Wasn't Holmes also a skilled boxer in addition to bartitsu? I've only read A Study In Scarlet and The Sign of the Four.

Yes -

Note, although this may confuse things a bit, that Bartitsu (the real-world martial art, as distinct from Holmes' "baritsu") actually included boxing as well as savate, jujitsu and stick fighting. Conan Doyle's definition of "baritsu" as "Japanese wrestling" suggests that he probably wasn't aware of that, and that he specifically associated Bartitsu with Japanese unarmed combat.

I didn't think much of the Holmes bare knuckle fight. His blows didn't look convincing.

I don't want to take anything away from the choreographer. It's a cinematically polished fight, and I've some experience of the work required. But it lacks the visceral 'realism' they speak of.[/video]

Do you mean the bare-knuckle fight from the 2010 movie, or the bar fight from the old TV series I linked to?